


Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying

by sasha_davidovna



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-07
Updated: 2007-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_davidovna/pseuds/sasha_davidovna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one who lived. Coda of sorts to "What Is and What Should Never Be"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying

It wasn't until three days later that Dean realized that somewhere up north in Nebraska, Layla Rourke had lived. Such an everyday tragedy, cancer, almost unremarked, and he had forgotten about her in the first flush of horror at the mindless carnage that had gone on unchallenged for years without him, without Sam, without Dad to stop it. He had forgotten, in that spreading sense of dread, to look for an undiagnosed brain tumor that had quietly claimed one life, and spared another.

"It wasn't real," Sam reminded him, when he brought it up in the car somewhere east of Dubuque. But a few hours later, when he emerged from the hotel bathroom still wrapped in a towel and beaded with water droplets in streaks across his back and shoulders, Sam handed him a printout of her obituary. "She died November 3rd," he said, before Dean could scan it. "In the university hospital in Omaha. Not that far from where we were, really."

"You could have gone, if you'd known," Dean said. She smiled up at him in black and white, an older picture, he thought. Her face was younger and happier than he'd known, full of life and sweetness still untempered by the weight of acceptance.

"No," Sam said. "I don't think so."

"Not you she would have wanted, I guess." Dean grinned crookedly and smacked a fist into Sammy's shoulder. "Always said that girl had taste."

Sam's mouth twitched in frustration. "Not her that _I_ wanted, doofus."

But the next day when Dean missed the turn that would have taken them north to the Roadhouse, and Bobby's beyond, Sam stayed silent. And when Dean just happened to find the turn that led them deep into the Sandhills, Sam said nothing either. The road disappeared around a curve before them into an endless, empty sweep of grass and sky.

And when they finally pulled off, towards a town that was really just a collection of houses hidden under a few stunted trees along the railway tracks, Sam was quiet still. A small white church with chipping paint and stained glass windows bright as jewels lay at one end of the silent, dusty street and Dean pulled into the gravel lot beside it.

"Just need to stretch my legs a moment," he said.

"Neat old church," Sam said. "Think I'll go check it out."

"I'll be out here," Dean said, and Sam pretended not to notice as he climbed the sagging steps to the church door that his brother was ambling directly over to the cemetery gate.

**Author's Note:**

> The town is not any specific one, but more or less matches the description of any of the scarce towns you pass along Highway 2, through the Sandhills. An emptier road is hard to find, but also a more beautiful one, if you like that sort of thing. [Here](http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfly/124996122/), [have](http://www.flickr.com/photos/21833852@N00/261452357/) [a](http://www.flickr.com/photos/flowrbx/181535414/) [few](http://www.flickr.com/photos/toadaway/102670994/) [pictures](http://www.flickr.com/photos/20524586@N00/159343913/)[.](http://www.flickr.com/photos/threefeetofair/200535735/)
> 
> The dates are based roughly on the Supernatural Wiki's [season one timeline](http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Timeline_%28Season_1%29). If the doctors were right and Layla had about six months left, she would have died in early November, right around the same time as the events of Devil's Trap and In My Time of Dying.


End file.
